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"E-mailable" House Snaps Together Without Nails (clemson.edu)
MikeChino writes: Your next house could snap together like a jigsaw puzzle without the use of any power tools. Clemson University students designed and built Indigo Pine, a carbon-neutral house that exists largely as a set of digital files that can be e-mailed to a wood shop anywhere in the world, CNC cut, and then assembled on-site in a matter of days. “Indigo Pine has global application,” says the Clemson team. “Because the house exists largely as a set of digital files, the plans can be sent anywhere in the world, constructed using local materials, adapted to the site, and influenced by local culture.”
And you'd think anyone with access to a laser cutter would have access to nails.
It's a cool project. Probably good for mass production, though plywood tends to be about 2-3x as expensive per board-foot, so there would need to be a lot of efficiency built in to match the raw material cost.
Also, it will be very difficult to customize.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Nice work, but it's pretty clear from the article that only the structural bits go together without fasteners (mostly). All of the interior finishes, doors, windows, etc. all clearly use conventional screws/nails. Not surprising, but not really the 'snap-together' house that the headline indicates, unless you plan to live in a bare structure open to the elements.
I'm pretty sure if your local lumber yard has a CNC machine they probably also sell hammers and nails.
Standard blueprints can already be e-mailed.
I would say the majority of existing homeowners did not use a single power tool to build their house either.
Will this meet building codes.
I see dimensional lumber in some of those photos.
Surely every potential homeowner / builder will have a cnc machine.
My mail client does not have the receive plywood feature. Can i upgrade?
And made this house.
No bolts? Thats a huge porch roof that needs to be secured lets the next hurricane rip it off. Sure you could go old school and use post and beam style but you still have to tie it down to the foundation.
Speaking of the foundation it looks like many small concrete blocks hopefully over slab on grade. It's not big enough to use as a service crawlspace I hope there is never a plumbing or vermin issue. There will be a vermin issue as it's a magnet for rodents and such. Again how they planning on fastening it to the ground so it does not blow away without bolts. Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and floods happen even in some hippy dippy microhouse.
Combo PV and hot water, it generally makes sense you're effectively cooling the PV panels and using the waste heat.
My mid 70's passive solar house did most of this and did it better, a basement floor drain doubles as outside air natural convection will cool the house and it preheats outside air in the winter. My 1954 well architected home did the math for correct overhangs and orientation to deal with solar gain without throwing ugly boxes around the windows. Correct plantings do wonders leaves for shade in summer not so much in winter.
No sir I dont like it.
I'm tired of seeing these things done by people in the south and sunny California where you don't need good insulation. Lots of BS about outdoor living spaces etc. Lets do the Solar Decathlon in Fargo North Dakota in February and see how these piles of lumber actually stack up. There's already a well defined system of building using SIP panels that provide significant improvement to the insulation value of the house system. They work well in hot and cold climates and are built form CNC cut panels that slot together. Or you can use the styrofoam and concrete building block method. Either method of building is going to give you a better insulated home that will have a lower energy impact on the environment over it's life time than what's been presented in this article. The only potential advantage of this kind of CNC cut panel house is for the DIY builder which could be valuable but it's still sadly lacking compared to other existing processes
It all starts at 0
“Because the house exists largely as a set of digital files, the plans can be sent anywhere in the world, constructed using local materials, adapted to the site, and influenced by local culture.”
Geez, don't know what it's going to be made of yet they still claim it's "carbon neutral".
It just means all the carbon parts are painted beige.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
Most homes in developing countries are built using bricks, clay, or concrete and cement. Wood, glass, steel and aluminum are expensive and rare in most of the world.
So why can't these digital files be adapted to clay, brick or cement construction?
Fundamentally all the materials have enormous strength in compression. We knew we could pile brick on brick, dirt on dirt and build enormous, stable enduring structures 5 to 10 thousand years ago. But all of them are brittle and they have no real strength in tension. They have very little elasticity. For a design to "snap" together, you need a little bit of elasticity and some tensile strength. You can not "bend" a concrete beam a little, snap it into place and it would not "spring" back to assume old shape with old strength. Bent concrete is dead concrete.
R & D on developing cheap housing for the developing nations is a very active area of research. Many universities around the world are working on it. But most solutions are dull, and do not lend themselves to flashy headlines. Back when I was in college, the very first rupee I earned in my life came from the Centre for Rural Development, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. We were working on natural gas from cow waste, cottage industries suitable for rural areas, efficient wood burning stoves, and cheaper construction techniques for mud huts. Internet has a role to play in rural development. But it is not going to be as simple as mailing a few files around the world.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Wouldn't a good option be to simply get a couple old shipping containers and do a little cutting and welding? You could use spray-on insulation and cover it in drywall. Would also be heavier and structurally much more sound than plywood. The stackable nature of containers means you could easily build a 2 story house, by building stairs and using 1 container for a hallway and 1 room and an adjoining container divided into 2-3 rooms. 4 old 40ft containers would get you 1200 sq ft and would cost 10-12k total. Bonus points for being green by using "reclaimed" items like the old shipping containers, reclaimed lumber for flooring/cabinets/furniture, etc.
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Paper plans are there for a different reason: Paper plans are stamped and signed by the architect/engineer and are the record/permit/contract set of construction drawings. I can't see any contractor worth his salt saying "I'll build that building based on a computer file that can be updated by remote push down"; there are to many chances of undocumented changes, issues on change orders and lawsuits over undocumented changes. And its not like engineering, architecture and contracting don't have enough of those problems.
I see is that there is plenty of dimensional lumber being used in that structural system. Different areas of the world use different dimensional lumber sizes than the US. Some areas of the world don't have dimensional lumber. Some areas of the world don't have the infrastructure required (dimensional lumber, CNC machines, trucks to ship the lumber).
I have concerns with the long term stability, durability of the structure. Nails and glue have been in use for a while (hundreds, if not thousands of years) because they work.
As a construction experiment in using new technology to find new ways to design and build buildings it is an interesting experiment. I applaud them for trying this. Its like looking at the concept cars that Ford, Nissan, Subaru, etc release every year and are loaded up with all sorts of outlandish features, some of which will obviously never get to production, some need some refinement and some are pretty good. I have no problem with someone deciding to build the equivalent of a concept car. Don't be surprised if your concept takes a long time to be adopted by the building industry. It will take that long to be vetted by architects, engineers, suppliers and contractors. Hell - it took almost twenty years for contractors to adopt Pro-Press pipe fittings as the preferred option over copper sweated fittings (and that is just copper pipe).
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
made with a 3D printer so when it is all done it is monolithic and practically able to withstand tornadoes and hurricanes https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
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Do people know that you can also e-mail blue prints for standard houses too? Does that make the house "e-mailable?"
I don't know why, but outrageously stupid statements are becoming more and more common. No, this house doesn't "exist largely as a set of digital files". It exists largely as tons of wood. The *instructions* are digital files.
Mortise and tenon predate nails and what we'd consider a suitable glue. Advances don't happen if people always stick only with what has always worked and not try other things that may work better or differently.
Not as much as you might think. Until the industrial revolution, nails had to be made one at a time by a blacksmith and were thus freaking expensive.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Anywhere it freezes in the winter (which covers a rather large swath of the world, but certainly not all of it), you need to establish the foundation below the soil frost depth or face your foundation heaving each winter and slowly but surely twisting your building into collapse. This building seems to have been designed for zones where the ground does not freeze.
Also, what happens when the nice solar panels get covered in six feet of snow? Oh, right, not made for that application. And when the wind blows hard and tears off the nice deck / car park? Right, again, not made for that application, either.
So, OK, they designed a house for temperate climates with moderate weather in a way that does not require nails or screws. An interesting design challenge, somewhat like, "let's see how fast the two of us can run in a three-legged race!" It's fun, you might learn something about design, but isn't really all that practical. Moreover, I see a lot of very expensive finish ply in those photos, so this design isn't intended for low-income housing.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
I can't see any contractor worth his salt saying "I'll build that building based on a computer file that can be updated by remote push down"
Nice straw man, and this is "5 Insightful"? The fuck?
Who the heck is talking of remote push down or undocumented changes? Do you even live in the same world I do? When the plans are final and approved, every contractor - at least in the U.S. - already gets their paper copies based on digital files that were a part of the bid package. They can also get those digitally, and have their site workers use whatever digital tech they care for to view those if they prefer that over dead trees.
The rest of your post makes sense, but please stop with the imaginary problems. Nobody is optically copying blueprints anymore.
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Umm, yeah. I live in Nebraska. Here, we have these things called "tornados." They're super windy god-sized vacuum cleaners that rake across the landscape periodically.
Do I really want a snap-together house the next time the tornado sirens start going?
Gee ... shipped anywhere they have CNC milling equipment AND plywood.
Not really as useful to the rural poor and disaster areas as it sounds if you need all that infrastructure.
If we use up all of our clay, we'll be in deep trouble.
I think I said that advances occur very slowly in the construction industry. Mortise and tenon has been abandoned. Why? Because something came along that was cheaper/faster with all other things being equal. Eventually something will come along that will replace nails and glue. I don't know what it is.
I won't use a technology/system that hasn't already been vetted through the insurance and rating agencies (UL, et al). If you come to me trying to get me to schedule/specify a product that hasn't made it past the rating agencies I'll throw you out with the bath water. I don't have time for untested and unrated equipment.
There are plenty of competing technologies that are tested and rated (have the UL mark) and are still trying to break into competitive construction in a big manner:
Precut lumber (mostly in use in custom home construction but not much elsewhere)
Engineered lumber products (it shows up when space is the constraint)
Automated concrete laying (Not matter what people say, this is still experimental)
Pro-Press fittings for refrigerant piping (just came on the market, the contractor is willing to give it a go with our blessing)
Integrated duct/insulation systems (This keeps coming up as an alternative to galvanized and keeps getting shot down)
Alternative grease duct systems (Fire rated systems that take less space)
3D printing (This is a novelty right now, but one that works. A couple of architects have specified it for difficult metal fittings in unusual buildings).
I could name a half dozen other technologies that are coming into maturity and their adoption is based upon preference or "We did it this way when I was a whipper snapper and you will to".
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
Look at those long wood beams... perfect, very pretty, and also expensive! Is there a house behind it? Very little on the porch is covered on their website, and it doesn't show up on any of their "sustainability" materials. Meanwhile, it features in half of the pictures on the competition website.
If they want to point out how they're using local materials and these new techniques, maybe get rid of that massive redwood "porch" that is neither local, inexpensive, nor innovative.
"exists largely as a set of digital files that can be e-mailed to a wood shop anywhere in the world"
Yes, that is all locked in in PDF or an approved format that cannot be edited after the fact.
I have seen some sleazy attempts by architects and engineers to slide things in under radar. Undocumented changes between Bid sets and contract sets for instance. Luckily I was only the commissioning agent on that. You can bet there was a lawsuit over that little stunt when it got caught.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
Every edutainment channel has at least one show about tiny houses. Most of them are showcasing how nice they look, while ignoring the utility, economic, and environmental shortcomings of "going tiny". When your tiny house generates 4 tons of garbage, you're doing environmentalism the wrong way.
This is interesting but wouldn't adult sized Legos be easier?
Probably not. Wood is extremely expensive here. Unlike nails. Or bricks.
And I can't see you getting planning permission without an architect.
The reason people dont build there own houses here is planning permission.
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I didn't think the rest of the post made any sense, either. This isn't being made out of 1/8" thick stamped balsa wood. It's much bigger and (presumably) designed to be much more sturdy because it's got different goals. The rest of the post is just as much of a strawman.
Traditional Japanese joinery forgoes nails for the most part, but even a traditional western house with nails can be put together without power tools... a saw and hammer makes it a bit more work that using power tools but certainly not any more work than a CNC kit house.
Seriously? Yeah, snap together house is cool, but making a big tech splash because you can fucking email it?
Holy fuck sauce batman, get on the bat phone, someone figured out you can email blue prints to places for fabrication.
And what the fuck is carbon neutral? The blue prints because you emailed them through the shit ton of electronics chewing on coal? Or the wood the shop uses to create it, from the trees they cut down with power tools, which used carbon based material to create, which consume gasoline or power to operate. My god, everyone is a politician.
Where did the 4th one go? I swear it was 3 nails. One for each hand and a single through both feet. The Romans sure weren't wasting an extra nail!
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
I think you could buy all materials, blueprints and instructions from Sears for like a thousand dollars, including shipping. Then add several hundred hours of sweat equity to construct it.
A pretty high quality one still around is the Nixon birthhouse at his library in Yorba Linda. I think it has a Great Room, a couple of bedrooms and bathroom. I've seen others preserved in Western mining towns. Pre-manufactured homes eventually superceded these.
It may have been three but they were really big nails.
When you finish building the house, advertisements and porn suddenly start displaying all over the walls, ceilings, etc. Yep. Malware in the email.
Linda's cedar homes has specialized in custom homes from logs milled to perfection so that snap assemble without much nailing or insulation. They are not milled locally but that's a good thing. Shipping raw logs or having large mills distributed around the country would be more wasteful than shipping the final logs. The homes they make are stunning custom masterpeices not prefab panel houses.
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Cow farts and Bindweed?
They nailed through the wrist, not the hand.
On a deserted island out in the pacific where the military needs to stash "stuff" CNC ply constructions soldiers jigsaw together no electricity required win-win.
Solar Decathalon competition optimized architecture for affordable environmentally sustainable energy contributing urban dwellings for human habitation - Loser.
You wouldn't download a house would you?
The Gypsies (AKA 'gyptians) stole it, which is why they have permission directly from God to steal and it is not accounted a sin for them.
(You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. See Mieczyslaw Dowojno-Sylwestrowicz, in Gypsy Lore Journal, i. 1889, p. 253.)
N/T
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The *design* is carbon neutral because the cost to ship it is only a handful of electrons.